Hunt the Space-Witch! (28 page)

Carnothute seemed amused. “A private audience is a rare privilege, my friend. My guards will have to be present throughout our conversation. Why do you come back?”

“To ask you questions. Did that party-girl Kassa return here yesterday after I left?”

Carnothute shrugged. “Perhaps.”

“She did. Where did you and she go?”

“My fleshly life is hardly your concern, worthy spacer. Are there any less personal questions you would ask?”

“This one,” Barsac said. “Some time between last night and this morning Kassa returned to her room and locked herself in. Then someone of unusual strength battered the door down and killed her. The police said it was a ritualistic murder. She was gutted and mutilated when I found her this morning. Here's your question: did you kill her?”

Chuckling, Carnothute said, “Party girls have short lives in Millyaurr. Why should you care whether a teenage slut lives or dies, you who land on Glaurus once a decade?”

“I care because the Cult killed her, and you're the only Cult member I know.
You
killed her. You killed her because she was trying to help me reach my blood-brother on Azonda, and because perhaps last night she extracted a promise from you that you chose not to keep when you reconsidered it in the harsher light of morning. Am I close, Carnothute? It's always easier to have a party girl murdered than to face the charge that you broke your sacred word.”

The governor's smooth-cheeked face darkened abruptly. In a cold, deep voice he said, “Let me give you advice, Barsac: forget the girl Kassa, and forget the Luasparru Zigmunn. The one is dead, the other beyond your reach. Give up your search and return to your ship.”

“And if I choose not to?”

“Then you will die sooner than your parents expected. Leave me, Barsac.” He turned to the three silent guards who waited near the door. “Take this man outside the palace and instruct him that he is not to return.”

They converged on Barsac. Gripping his arms tightly, they swept him out of Lord Carnothute's presence, down the interlocking corridors, and outside the palace grounds. There, the tallest of the three spun him around and slapped his face.

Barsac growled and started for him. Another tripped him, and as he fell sprawling he realized he was in for another beating.

They worked him over for ten minutes with light-hearted gaiety, while he aimed futile blows at each of them in turn. They were Darjunnans, long-limbed and lithe, and while he managed to bruise their silky violet skins from time to time they inflicted far worse damage on him. Five times he struggled to his feet only to be battered down again; they concentrated their attention on his empty stomach, drumming blows off it with sickening frequency.

Once he swung wildly and broke a nose; a moment later a kick behind the knee-joints dropped him on his face, gasping, and they devoted some time to his kidneys. They pummelled him efficiently, as if they were well-trained as a team; when Barsac hung to consciousness by only a thread one said, “Enough,” and they left him.

He walked about ten paces and stumbled. He groped for a bench, found it, clung to its cool stone, and through puffed eyes watched drops of his own blood dripping from his face and puddling against the white flagstone walk. Dimly he realized they had not robbed him, and it surprised him.

He sat there five minutes, ten, unable to get up. His face throbbed. Every part of him ached. But they had shrewdly stopped while he yet was conscious, devilishly, so he would feel every moment of the pain.

He sensed the fact that someone stood in front of him, looking down. He tried to open his eyes. “Kassa?” he asked.

“No. I'm not Kassa. I suppose you found the Street of Tears, spacer. And then the Street of Blood.”

“Who are you?”

“We met earlier this day. I offered to help you then. But I think you need it more now.”

Through pain-hazed eyes Barsac made out the lean wiry figure of Erpad Ystilog, the Exhibitor of Curiosities.

Chapter Four

Barsac lay back on the hard, uncomfortable couch and tried to relax. He failed; every nerve seemed wound tightly, almost to the breaking point. He was in number 1123, Street of Liars. Ystilog had brought him home.

“Awake?” Ystilog asked.

Barsac looked up at the sallow pock-marked face, the great curved beak of a nose. “More awake than asleep, I guess. What time is it?”

“Well after noon. Feeling better? Drink this.”

Forcing himself into a sitting position, Barsac accepted the cup. It contained a warm brownish liquid; he drank without questioning. The taste was faintly sweet.

“Good. I guess I owe you thanks.”

Ystilog shrugged deprecatingly. “Never mind that. Rest, now; you'll need to rebuild your strength.”

The curio-exhibitor left him. Barsac wanted to protest that he could not stay here any longer, that he had to make a further attempt to find Zigmunn, that time was running short and he would soon have to return to the
Dywain
. But the pain got the better of him; he slumped back and dropped off into sleep.

He woke again, some time later, feeling stiff and sore but stronger than he had been. Ystilog stood above him.

“I feel better now,” Barsac said. “And I must go. I have little time.”

“Why the rush?”

“My ship leaves Glaurus at the end of this week. And before then I have things to do.”

“You've had ill luck so far, I'd say. My offer still goes—a job is open for you.”

“I'm a spacer.”

“Leave space. It's a loathsome life. Stay here in my employ. I need a strong-bodied assistant, one who can protect a frail man like myself. I encounter much danger while traveling with my museum. And I can pay you—not well, alas, but enough.”

Barsac shook his head. “Sorry, Ystilog. You've been good to me, but it's out of the question. The
Dywain
is a good ship. I don't want to leave it.”

Disappointment gleamed briefly on Ystilog's face. “I could use you, Barsac.”

“I tell you no. But give me some information, before I leave.”

“If I can.”

“My purpose is to find my blood-brother, a Luasparru, Zigmunn by name. At the cost of two beatings and a robbing I've found out that he's been initiated into the Cult of the Witch, and is now on Azonda.”

The smile left Ystilog's face. “So?”

“I want to find him and break him loose from the Cult. But I know nothing about this Cult. Tell me—what is it? From what did it spring? What are its aims?”

Quietly Ystilog said, “I can tell you little—the little that every non-initiated Glauran knows. The Cult is a thousand years old—more, perhaps. Its headquarters are on Azonda. A dead planet, as you may know. Heart of the Cult is the so-called Witch of Azonda.”

“Tell me about her.”

“There is nothing to tell. Only members may see her. She is supposedly lovely, immortal-and faceless. Cult members spend a year on Azonda worshipping her. Perhaps one Glauran in a thousand is a member. They practice certain dark rites, and the law ignores them. People think that most of our high officials are Cult members. If your blood-brother's gone to Azonda, forget him. He's lost to you forever.”

Barsac scowled. “I refuse to believe that. I still have three days to find him.”

“You'll find nothing but more pain,” Ystilog said. “But if you're determined, I suppose I can't hold you back. You'll find your clothes in that closet. And don't try to pay me for what I've done; it was simple common courtesy.”

Barsac dressed in silence. When he had donned the last of his garments, Ystilog reappeared, smiling. He carried a mug of wine.

“Have a drink as a parting toast,” Ystilog said. He handed the mug to Barsac. “Go to your quest. And success.”

Barsac drank. Tightening his cloak around him, he headed for the door—but before he passed the threshold his legs wobbled and refused to hold him. He sagged crazily; Ystilog caught him and eased him to the couch.

Bitterly he realized he had once again played the fool. A roaring tide of unconsciousness swept down over him, and he knew he had accepted a drink that was drugged.

Church bells woke him. He suffered at the first echoing peal, stirred, sat up in bed. His eyes were pasted together; he had to work to get them open. He felt rusty at the joints, stiff, flabby.

Church bells. The end of the week. The
Dywain
was leaving!

He jerked off the covers, climbed from the bed, slipped, stumbled, fell headlong. His legs and feet were numb from inactivity. He hoisted himself erect, alarm giving him strength.

“Ystilog! Damn you, where are you?”

“Here I am,” said a quiet voice.

Barsac whirled unsteadily. Ystilog stood behind him, smiling pleasantly. He wore a black watered silk lounging robe and a blue morning wig. In his hand was a wedge-shaped blade, eight inches long, glittering.

“You drugged me,” Barsac accused. “How long did I sleep? What day is it? What time is it?”

“Your ship left Glaurus half an hour ago,” Ystilog said smoothly. “I was at the spaceport. I watched it depart; it was quite lovely to see it climb high and wink into overdrive, vanishing in the blue.”

Rage surged through Barsac. He took two hesitant steps forward.

“Why did you do this?”

“I needed an assistant. A good man is hard to find. And you have muscles, Barsac, if no brains. The pay is eleven units a week plus food and board.”

“Eleven units!
” Barsac clenched his fists and advanced. The smaller man waited, unafraid.

“Put that knife away, Ystilog, and—”

Ystilog sheathed the knife. “Yes? You'll what?” He waved his empty hands in the air.

“I'll—I'll what have you done to me?” Barsac growled.

“Conditioned you against doing me harm,” Ystilog said. “I would be as big a fool as you to do otherwise. If you were in my place and I in yours, I would not hesitate to kill you as brutally as possible … if I were able. So you are not able. See?”

Barsac looked at his impotent hands. He longed to wring Ystilog's fragile neck, but it would have been easier to strangle himself to death. An unbreakable geas lay upon him, keeping him from action.

He sank down numbly on the couch where he had slept so long. A quiver of suppressed anger and frustration rippled through him. “Is my ship really gone?”

“Yes,” Ystilog said.

Barsac moistened his lips. This had been Zigmunn's fate, and now a decade later it was his. Like brother, like brother. Naturally Captain Jaspell would not have held up departure for the sake of an overdue fuelsman; starship schedules were as inflexible as the solar precessions.

“All right,” Barsac said quietly. “I've been beaten and robbed and drugged, and now I've lost my ship as well. This trip to Glaurus has been grand. Just grand. Suppose you tell me what I'm supposed to do.”

They left four days later by sea for Zunnigen-nar, the great continent of Glaurus' eastern hemisphere, where the people had a mildly greenish tinge to their skins and where the spoken tongue made maddeningly slight use of verbs. Barsac, in his new position as Ystilog's bodyguard, wore new clothes of synthetic silk, and carried a fifty-watt shocker at his waist. The shocker had an illegal amplifier installed which boosted the output to lethal intensity, but this was not readily apparent even on close inspection, and the weapon could pass for a standard two-ampere model. Barsac longed to use it on his employer and fry his synapses, but his conditioning made that impossible.

The ship on which they departed was a small one which Ystilog had engaged for his personal use. It contained the whole of Ystilog's traveling museum-cum-circus.

Ystilog had acquired a variegated array of treasures. There were dreams-tones from Sollighat, ghostly yellow in color and narcotic in their beauty; emerald-cut gems from the barren wastes of Duu, glistening in their metallic settings; talking trees of Thanamon, with their croaking vocabularies of seven or eight words of greeting and fifteen or twenty scabrous obscenities.

There were living creatures in cages, too: dwarf squids of Qi, hunching up in their tanks and fixing malevolent red gimlet-eyes on the onlookers; raintoads from Mivaghik, violet-hued legless salamanders from the blazing sunside of UpjiLaz, smiling protopods of Viron. Creatures from Earth, too, scorpions and sleek serpents and star-faced moles, platypusses and echidnas, sad-faced proboscis monkeys. The menagerie was at all times a chattering madhouse, and it was part of Barsac's job to feed each creature its special food every morning.

Ystilog had warned him to be careful; his predecessor in the job had lost an arm tossing flesh into the protopod-cage. The smiling creatures moved with blinding agility.

They opened at a showhouse in Zibilnor, largest city of the continent, and for seventeen days did spectacular business. Ystilog charged a unit a head for admission, half price for children and slaves, and during the time in Zibilnor grossed no less than twenty-eight thousand units, by Barsac's count. They jostled close, anxious to see the deadly creatures of twenty worlds that Ystilog had assembled, staring with covetous eyes at his gems and at his curios.

Twenty-eight thousand units. And through it all Barsac received eleven units a week, room and board. Eleven units a week was barely wine-money. He longed to slit Ystilog's throat, but could not approach the circus owner with a weapon. On the last day but one of their stay in Zibilnor, Barsac sought out a professional killer. His intention was to offer the man full rights to Ystilog's circus if he would kill the entrepreneur, but when the time came to make the offer Barsac's mental block intervened, and he was unable to speak. He stumbled away, tongue-tied.

The circus moved on—slowly, across the face of Zunnigennar, Ystilog pausing here and there for a three-day engagement, a five-day stand. Local bearers helped them move the crates from one town to the next; Ystilog hired men to precede them, announcing that the show was coming.